After The Darkest Night (2012), the only woman to win the Oscar for Best Director returns with a real event in 1967, when a bloody riot claimed the lives of 43 civilians.
Still after 50 years, Detroit's 12th Street in the state of Michigan is remembered for having been the scene of the largest racial riot in US history. Between July 23 and 28, 1967, the actions of the police, the army and the National Guard on the same avenue, inhabited mostly by the black population, killed 43 people, more than a thousand wounded and another 7,000 detained in Only five days. That year, 83 people lost their lives as a result of racial violence in 128 cities of the world's most powerful power, but the magnitude of the Detroit mutiny was unprecedented.
The following year, the same year that Baptist pastor and civil rights advocate for the African American population Martin Luther King was murdered by his detractors, Time and Life published extensive chronicles of the bloody episodes that ingrained mid- century. However, it was a crude and detailed journalistic research published by the Detroit Free Press which remained with the Pulitzer.
Popular culture was responsible for perpetuating the memory of the victims: Black Day in July by Canadian composer Gordon Lightfoot and Panic in Detroit, the single that was part of David Bowie's 1973 album Aladdin Sane, criticized the persecution of African Americans in USA, and particularly that of the inhabitants of 12th Street. The same thing happened years later, the films Dreamgirls (2006) and Across the Universe (2007).
And now, director Kathryn Bigelow (1951), who has not spoken since The Darkest Night (2012), the film about the capture and death of Osama Bin Laden, will do the same with Detroit, a tape that prior to its release , Next Friday August 4 in the US, has already fueled the memory and has raised expectations in his eventual race for the Oscars.
The return and the cause
On the morning of July 26, 1967, security guard Melvin Dismukes was watching a store across the street, and after midnight he heard shots from the well-known Motel Algiers, meters away. A contingent of police, guards and other uniformed men, aware of the presence of alleged snipers, cautiously advanced toward the building to track down the scene: in a matter of minutes, Dismukes himself fired at point blank range at three black civilians who were in one of the rooms.
Aubrey Pollard (19), Carl Cooper (17) and Fred Temple (18) became three of the martyrs of the most violent night of Algerian history. The same episode prompted the director of Point Break, who also holds the record of being the only woman to win the Oscar for Best Director in 2010 for Living the Edge, to write this film with screenwriter Mark Boal.
Starring Will Poulter, Algee Smith, Jason Mitchell and John Boyega, the latter in the role of Dismukes, the African American guard who was guilty of the death of three people and who was released on bail of $ 1,500 in 1968, Even without a release date in Chile already accumulates favorable reviews.
"This is not a comforting drama of social protest. It's closer to a historic nightmare triggering, from which you can not let go, "noted critic Owen Gleiberman at Variety. Leah Greenblatt, her partner in Entertainment Weekly, said it was "a history of American terror rooted so deeply and shamefully in the country that it is still painful to see it half a century after the actual facts on which it was based" .
The 65-year-old filmmaker, meanwhile, has already commented on her interest in the same episode: "These events seem to be repeated. This is a situation that happened 50 years ago, and yet it feels very much like it is today. Look at South Africa, where there is truth and reconciliation, and here I feel that there is not enough talk about race. That's why I think the film has the potential to provide an opportunity to participate in that dialogue. I can only hope there is an urgency and a need for it, because there is no other way to begin a healing process, "he said in a recent interview with Detroit News.
"The world has given me a kind of microphone, not unlike yours," Bigelow told the reporter, "and I feel there's a responsibility that goes with that. If I can somehow use this medium, the cinema, to push forward, you know, the purpose of art is to stir and bring about change. I felt this story was an American tragedy important enough to be told. I've always believed that and I keep doing it," he concluded.
Still after 50 years, Detroit's 12th Street in the state of Michigan is remembered for having been the scene of the largest racial riot in US history. Between July 23 and 28, 1967, the actions of the police, the army and the National Guard on the same avenue, inhabited mostly by the black population, killed 43 people, more than a thousand wounded and another 7,000 detained in Only five days. That year, 83 people lost their lives as a result of racial violence in 128 cities of the world's most powerful power, but the magnitude of the Detroit mutiny was unprecedented.
The following year, the same year that Baptist pastor and civil rights advocate for the African American population Martin Luther King was murdered by his detractors, Time and Life published extensive chronicles of the bloody episodes that ingrained mid- century. However, it was a crude and detailed journalistic research published by the Detroit Free Press which remained with the Pulitzer.
Popular culture was responsible for perpetuating the memory of the victims: Black Day in July by Canadian composer Gordon Lightfoot and Panic in Detroit, the single that was part of David Bowie's 1973 album Aladdin Sane, criticized the persecution of African Americans in USA, and particularly that of the inhabitants of 12th Street. The same thing happened years later, the films Dreamgirls (2006) and Across the Universe (2007).
And now, director Kathryn Bigelow (1951), who has not spoken since The Darkest Night (2012), the film about the capture and death of Osama Bin Laden, will do the same with Detroit, a tape that prior to its release , Next Friday August 4 in the US, has already fueled the memory and has raised expectations in his eventual race for the Oscars.
The return and the cause
On the morning of July 26, 1967, security guard Melvin Dismukes was watching a store across the street, and after midnight he heard shots from the well-known Motel Algiers, meters away. A contingent of police, guards and other uniformed men, aware of the presence of alleged snipers, cautiously advanced toward the building to track down the scene: in a matter of minutes, Dismukes himself fired at point blank range at three black civilians who were in one of the rooms.
Aubrey Pollard (19), Carl Cooper (17) and Fred Temple (18) became three of the martyrs of the most violent night of Algerian history. The same episode prompted the director of Point Break, who also holds the record of being the only woman to win the Oscar for Best Director in 2010 for Living the Edge, to write this film with screenwriter Mark Boal.
Starring Will Poulter, Algee Smith, Jason Mitchell and John Boyega, the latter in the role of Dismukes, the African American guard who was guilty of the death of three people and who was released on bail of $ 1,500 in 1968, Even without a release date in Chile already accumulates favorable reviews.
"This is not a comforting drama of social protest. It's closer to a historic nightmare triggering, from which you can not let go, "noted critic Owen Gleiberman at Variety. Leah Greenblatt, her partner in Entertainment Weekly, said it was "a history of American terror rooted so deeply and shamefully in the country that it is still painful to see it half a century after the actual facts on which it was based" .
The 65-year-old filmmaker, meanwhile, has already commented on her interest in the same episode: "These events seem to be repeated. This is a situation that happened 50 years ago, and yet it feels very much like it is today. Look at South Africa, where there is truth and reconciliation, and here I feel that there is not enough talk about race. That's why I think the film has the potential to provide an opportunity to participate in that dialogue. I can only hope there is an urgency and a need for it, because there is no other way to begin a healing process, "he said in a recent interview with Detroit News.
"The world has given me a kind of microphone, not unlike yours," Bigelow told the reporter, "and I feel there's a responsibility that goes with that. If I can somehow use this medium, the cinema, to push forward, you know, the purpose of art is to stir and bring about change. I felt this story was an American tragedy important enough to be told. I've always believed that and I keep doing it," he concluded.